PowerMac 1.8 or iMac 20" 1.8

[Satchmo]

Been thinking of picking up a new iMac G5 to replace my ageing iMac G4 700.
Partly for speed but mostly because Apple has screwed me by going USB 2.0 on all it's iPods.

Regardless, my concern over getting another AIO is lifespan. The G4 iMac has served me well but I definitely missed the ability to add a larger monitor. I suppose getting a 20" iMac would certainly give it more longevity than the 17" model. But there's also the issue of video cards etc...

Bottom line...what would you get ? (both at Apple's refurbished store)

Power Mac G5 1.8 GHz/ 256MB/ 80GB/ SuperDrive/ GigE/ 56K
$1099
or
iMac G5 1.8GHz/ 256MB/ 160GB/ SuperDrive/ 56K/ 20-inch
$1149

:)

[Luca]

Absolutely get the iMac. The single 1.8 GHz PowerMac G5 is a terrible machine. Actually, let me qualify that... the second revision of the single 1.8 GHz G5 is a bad machine. It's almost exactly the same as the iMac, with a 3:1 CPU to bus speed ratio and a processor that's actually soldered in place. It has an AGP slot and three PCI (not PCI-X) slots, and four (not eight) RAM slots.

Basically the iMac is the same machine except it has a big screen built into it. Go for it! Besides, what good will PCI and AGP slots do you in two or three years? Gonna try to run the latest games on an upgraded video card? You can't upgrade the processor in the PowerMac. I just don't see the point.

[Wyatt]

I'll second that. I would have bought the 20" refurb myself had I not already had an LCD monitor. The iMac is a fantastic machine and it looks beautiful no matter where you put it. Go for the iMac.

[ast3r3x]

So when you mean soldered on, you mean not on a daughter card? Surely there are ways to upgrade the processor without taking it out, I thought they used to make cards that still did that. But I guess they make iMac upgrades as well too.

I'd go with the iMac probably because it comes with a reall cheap, pretty nice 20" screen. But the powermac would probably be able to last a little longer albeit not much.

[murbot]

Satch, you having a buddy in the US pick this up for you?

[Satchmo]

Satch, you having a buddy in the US pick this up for you?

Yeah Murbot. My brother and his family come up each year for the holidays...it's my window of opportunity to grab something from the refurb store.
Although I feel guilty...his minivan is already packed full. :)

[Wyatt]

Ahh, yes, sweet opportunism... :D

[Luca]

So when you mean soldered on, you mean not on a daughter card? Surely there are ways to upgrade the processor without taking it out, I thought they used to make cards that still did that. But I guess they make iMac upgrades as well too.
I read about this on Hardmac.com (English translation of MacBiddoouuxxxllieee). The single CPU in the single 1.8 PowerMac G5 is soldered on. That's the FIRST TIME Apple has shipped a PowerMac with a soldered processor since the PowerMac 7200 in 1995. Back then, people complained loudly about the complete lack of an upgrade path, and it took years for Sonnet to develop a CPU upgrade for the machine. Their method was to actually build an entire mini-motherboard onto a PCI card, with a G3 processor and even its own RAM slots. The upgrade was expensive and therefore not entirely viable. Nowadays it's well under $100 and serves as a decent compliment to a 7200 (which should be free these days).

That won't work with the PowerMac G5. Think about it—the old 7200 did work with the PCI slot upgrade, but that was moving from a 120 MHz processor to a 400 MHz one. And the single 1.8 not only has a soldered processor, but it also has plain PCI slots not unlike the ones in the 7200! No PCI-X here. So the upgrade path is completely locked.

A few other Macs have had CPU upgrades available despite the lack of a processor socket. For example, the 5400/5500/6400/6500 machines all have soldered processors but Sonnet got around the problem by developing a G3 upgrade for the L2 cache slot in those machines. Unfortunately, the PowerMac G5 also doesn't have an L2 cache slot.

In short—the single 1.8 G5 has no upgrade path, save either a motherboard replacement (which would cost too much to be worth it) or replacement of whatever components are interchangeable. So you can upgrade the RAM to 4 GB (maybe 8 GB if 2 GB DIMMs are compatible), you can toss in a pair of 500+ GB hard drives, and you can put a Radeon X800XT in there, but you're stuck with the same processor no matter what. Upgradable graphics are nice but they're not worth it when the iMac offers a big LCD screen... and they're not really worth anything at all if you can't also upgrade the processor to keep up with the video card.

I'd go with the iMac probably because it comes with a reall cheap, pretty nice 20" screen. But the powermac would probably be able to last a little longer albeit not much.
Yep. And while the iMac's video card is not really impressive, it's not too bad either. In fact, if you get a Rev. B refurbished iMac, it'll actually be BETTER than the PowerMac, since the Radeon 9600 is faster than the GeForce 5200.

Like I said, without the ability to upgrade the CPU, there's really no point to having an upgradable graphics slot. There will be no tangible benefit to installing anything more powerful than a Radeon 9800 because the CPU will become the bottleneck at that point.